Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Races are Weird

I am alive! The race was hard, but I finished.

Here’s what happened:

Friday night- We finished The Wire. All five seasons, done!

Saturday-
I woke up at 5am and we were out the door 20 minutes later. I had packed extra water, a pack of Shot Bloks, and 1 mini bagel for consumption before the race. Chris kindly drove us to the airport Fast Park, where a line of school buses waited to drive us the rest of the way to the resort. We arrived at Fast Park at around 5:45am. Zooma warns you that the bus ride could take up to 40 minutes, and that the last bus leaves at 6:00am. I ate the mini bagel while we were on the bus. We arrived at the Hyatt Lost Pines just after 6:00am. Awesome, however...
really, really, not awesome. 1.5 hours to sit around and let my nerves completely tear me apart.

Although it looks like I am mocking the portrait behind me, this is actually my "there is nothing amusing about any of this," face.

My quad/groin/hip muscle was hurting, I had to pee every 5 minutes, and not even a few sips of Chris’ coffee would make me feel better. I just wanted to start running. But, that’s not how races work... so we wandered around the resort until 7:15am when I peed again (fourth time maybe?) and headed over to the start line.

Things are definitely looking better at this point!

I quickly found these ladies,

Well... Chris found them first

And we were off!

Miles 1-4
I kept a pretty solid 10:20 pace running up and down the hills. Sooo many hills. I was having a good time though, just taking in the scenery and watching other people. Running skirts are all the rage right now. And seriously ladies, do you think booty shorts are a good idea for a half marathon? Ugh, just stop.

Miles 5-6
This is when it got tougher. The hills were steeper and I was pretty much always thirsty. The sun started to peep out, so the wildflowers cheered me on.

Post Race picture of the wildflowers

Miles 8-9.5
Too much walking. I lost a lot of motivation. My train of thought went something like:
Why did I sign up for this?
I still have so far to go.
I've already run 8 miles and I've already impressed myself.
Walking is so much easier than running.
Wow, there are a lot of people even slower than I am = more reason to walk.

Mile 9.5-10
This race was really low on spectators, but one awesome guy really helped me out. He yelled, “it’s downhill until mile 10, you can do it, let gravity take you!” So, I ran that part of the race.

Mile 10-11
The course is really beautiful and weaves around the immaculate Wolfdancer golf course. Although it was pleasant to check out the quality of the greens, it was not pleasant seeing all the racers in front of you and behind you. I’d rather just see the people in front of me so I know I need to pick it up. But when you can also see the people behind you, it made me think it’d be okay if I slowed down even more. Using my stopwatch, I tried to do the 1 minute walk/5 minute run method until I made it to mile 12.

My total time was 2 hours and 26 minutes. Chris helped me realize that because I have never run 13.1 miles before, I cannot really say, “Oh, I could have done better.” I did the best I could because it’s the first time I did it.

Shortly after the race I changed into my swim suit and collapsed into the lazy river. As I floated around I passed by mile 12 and witnessed a few girls still out there trying to finish. Although I felt really bad that they weren't done yet, it also made me feel a little bit better about my own performance. Even though I had to walk, I still finished it in a decent time.

So happy to be done.

More reflection to come in the next few days, but at this point I am just so happy to be done.